


Let the Music Save Your Soul

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multimedia, Rey is a sweet starlight child, band!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6613534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moments that make us are often the ones we remember the best. Told in a series of snapshots, two bands - Millennium Falcon and First Order of Business - rise, spark, and collide as their members grow, interact, and pursue the music (and people) that they love.</p><p>"Rey waits until she hears the beat of drums coming from the garage, and then she starts to play."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Side A: Millennium Falcon

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [.and i am alive](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/191437) by thisissirius. 



> I am beyond frustrated with this fic right now because it took me FOREVER to figure out how to adequately get the photo edits embedded. They're my photo edits, btw; you'll be able to find them on my Tumblr (copper_nailpolish@tumblr.com) after this is posted. Due to my frustration, this piece will likely be re-edited at a later date.
> 
> Despite that, I am fond of this fic. It's not my usual style of writing, and it was a fun break from my Reylo Big Bang project. This was inspired by ".and i am alive", linked somewhere around here. ".and i am alive" is a fic from the Merlin/Merthur fandom, but the style the author uses and their massive amounts of multimedia inclusion are pretty damn cool.
> 
> Also: I use they/them pronouns for BB in this piece.
> 
> All that said, I hope you enjoy my piece!

_The indie-rock band_ Millennium Falcon  _has spent the past several years winning fans around the globe with their inspiring, optimistic music. Band members Rey Dameron, Poe Dameron, Finn Trooper, and Blake Bingley (BB) have all provided different media outlets with the story of the band's creation, and some of the group's more intrepid fans have worked to blend all of those stories together. Collected here are a series of snapshots, primarily from the perspective of Rey Dameron, following the band's initial birth and their subsequent rise to success._

_1) .renegades_

_‘Renegades’ was the first song written and performed by the siblings who would later found the band known as_ Millennium Falcon _. When asked about its orgins, Poe Dameron states that “it felt like a beginning, even when we didn’t understand what it was that was starting.”_

Rey Dameron is a fresh thirteen, her hair tied back in her trademark triple bun as she runs through the house. Her brother and his friends have set themselves up in the garage, and their attempts at music-making have shaken her from her solitude. She was tinkering with their father’s radio, and the parts remain strewn across her bedroom floor, but now watching her brother play seems much more entertaining.

She lingers in the doorway to the garage, a screen door between her and her brother. He has his bass – a gift from his seventeenth birthday – slung across his chest. He holds it like it could break and runs his calloused hands over the strings, moving around the garage to inspect the progress of his friends. Rey doesn’t know their names, because Poe is a friendly person and his comrades are many, but she’s bold enough to push through the screen door to join them.

“What’re you doing?”

Poe turns and offers her his brightest smile. “We’re practicing, princess,” he says. “Are we bothering you?”

Rey shakes her head, no, and does her best not to sneer at her brother’s nickname. She makes her way between his friends, waving at them as she looks at their instruments.

“What are you practicing for?”

“There’s a talent show coming up at the high school,” Poe tells her. “We’re thinking about entering.”

“Yeah?” One of Poe’s friends passes her his guitar and grins as she tries her hand. It’s not quite right, she thinks, but the notes sound good. “What’re you going to play?”

“We’ve got a song,” the boy behind the drum set says. Rey turns to him, the guitar still hanging from her shoulders, and cocks her head. He waves a drum stick at her. “We’ve been trying to get it right for a while.”

“Do you want to hear it?” Poe asks.

Rey turns back to him. She is, for a moment, envious of his easy-going smile and his ragtag group of friends, but that envy fades at the prospect of a song. She nods, then goes to give the guitar back to Poe’s first friend. She makes her way over to the garage steps while the band sets up, plugging into amps and adjusting the tuning of their instruments.

“Alright,” Poe says, more to himself than to his bandmates, over even to Rey. “Snaps, give us a beat.”

The drummer taps something steady out onto the rim of his snare, and then they’re beginning.

Rey watches as the music flows on around them. They’re young, all of them, and the music needs refining, but the moment feels important.

When the song ends, she claps, because it feels right to do so. Snaps grins at her from the drum set, and Poe’s smile could outshine the sun.

“Do you think,” Rey begins, only to backtrack a moment later. “Do you think I could play, too?” It’s what thirteen year old sisters do, or so she’s been told, and Rey has a piano in her room, settled back and away from the dissected radio parts.

Poe’s smile doesn’t fade, exactly, but it dims by a few megawatts. “Maybe later, alright?” he says, not quite a no but definitely not a yes. “We need to get the basics of it down first before we start messing around with it.”

Rey nods, understanding a dismissal when she sees one. She stays in the garage for a few minutes longer, then goes back to her room. She doesn’t touch the radio, but instead goes straight to her piano.

She waits until she hears the beat of Snap’s drum coming from the garage, and then she starts to play.

_2) .iwillneverdie_

_While Rey Dameron would prove herself a versatile song writer over the course of her career, her first song, ‘I Will Never Die’, has been adopted as a power anthem by thousands of individuals who have come to love_ Millennium Falcon _and its work, and remains one of the band’s most popular songs._

She comes home from school, her hair a mess and her nose a blazing red. She doesn’t let her mother hug her when she comes storming through the door, oh no; Rey blazes through the kitchen like a wildfire and heads straight for her bedroom. The door slams shut behind her with shuddering finality.

Her mother calls her father, halfway to tears and begging to know what to do. Her father sighs from behind his desk at work, hangs up, and then calls Poe.

Poe Dameron drives home that afternoon from his university campus (an hour and a half away) and is the first to walk down the long hallway towards Rey’s bedroom. He doesn’t hesitate before knocking, his fist creating a steady beat on the door.

“Open up, princess.”

There is a moment of silence. Then, the doorknob turns. An opening of maybe an inch reveals his sister, sniveling with her hands pressed against her chest.

Poe takes the opening she gives him. He pushes into the room and shuts the door behind him, following her to her bed. The room is dark, cast a glowing red with the setting sun, but she refuses to turn any of the lights on. There’s a notebook on her bed that looks like it’s been ripped to shreds, but Poe wisely doesn’t comment.

“What happened?”

Rey settles herself back on the bed and folds her feet beneath her. She won’t meet his gaze, but he can see her bottom lip quivering.

“Jessika broke up with me,” she says, and oh, now it all makes sense. “She said – some kids were teasing us, calling us these names, and she told me that – that she didn’t want to deal with it anymore. That it wasn’t worth it.” She chokes on her words and buries her face in her arms. Poe moves at once, wrapping his arms around his trembling little sister.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, letting her lean into him. “You deserve better than that.”

“I know I do,” Rey snarls, her voice muffled but still biting. “I keep telling myself that, but it still hurts!”

She dissolves in his arms, so young, and Poe mentally thanks his father for calling him home. He murmurs soft stories in her ear while she weeps, meaningless stories about his misadventures on his college campus. He tells her about the young man he met in a local coffee shop who sold him his biology notes for an americano and a date, and about the woman, taller than a skyscraper, who’s reteaching him how to play his bass. He talks until Rey’s sniffling has stopped and there’s a sizable stain on his worn out shirt.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, pressing herself closer.

“Don’t worry about it, princess.”

They stay like that until their mother comes and knocks on the door. Poe is the one to pull it open, and then to explain what’s happened. Rey’s tears when her mother hugs her are fewer, but Poe can still see her shoulders shaking.

He stays at home that night and tells his family that he’ll leave in the morning. It’s midnight when Rey sneaks into his room (it’s too small for him now, but his old model airplanes are still lined on his desk like trophies, and they make him smile). She has a crumpled piece of paper balled up in her hands, and she shows it to him like she’s six years old and has drawn him something beautiful.

Poe reads what’s supposed to be poetry and finds himself tapping his foot along to a beat. “You know,” he says, when he sets it aside. “We could turn this into a song.”

The smile Rey gives him is watery and bright.

She skips school the next day to go to his campus with him. They find an empty practice room in the music building and set her up at the piano, and him on his bass. Neither of them are sure how many hours they spend there, but by the time they’re done, they’ve used every available surface as a drum set, and there’s scribbled sheet music to go along with the song.

It’s only one the ride home that the fateful words leave her mouth. “You know,” she says, her lips wrapped around the straw of a gas station slurpee. “If you ever wanted to get the band back together, I have a friend who would be interested.”

He doesn’t think about it until years later, but this is the moment that _Millennium Falcon_ comes bursting to life.

  _3) .heybrother_

_There are a few different editions of ‘Hey, Brother’ that can be found by typing the name into Google. Fans of_ Millennium Falcon _have argued over which is the best in forums, on blogs, and to the artists’ faces._ Millennium Falcon _as a whole is yet to comment, but Finn Trooper, drummer and sometimes-singer, states that he likes Poe’s the best. “Don’t tell Rey,” he pleads, after the statement is released. “That girl is gonna call me a traitor until the day I die.”_

Rey introduces Poe to Finn over a video chat two months after her break up with Jessika. Poe has bags under his eyes but his grin is no duller, not even through the pixelated computer screen. For a moment, Rey is wildly jealous – he makes Finn laugh in a way she never could, not even when she was trying. But then the moment passes. Friends do not come as easily to her as they do to Poe, and the ones she has are precious. She won’t let something like this – another friend falling into Poe’s charm – ruin the precious growth she’s worked so hard to cultivate.

They talk for longer than any of them anticipate. The conversation flows from school to their music, and before long Poe has his bass on his lap and Rey’s moved the computer onto the window sill so he can have a clear shot of her piano. Finn pounds on whatever surface he can find as they cover songs they’ve heard on the radio, finding the notes by ear until they’re pounding out something almost passible. Their voices blend like a smooth cup of coffee, and it doesn’t take long before they’re all winded with laughter.

Poe invites them both down to his campus the next weekend. Finn, with his car and his ever-growing smile, agrees at once. Rey rolls her eyes and tells her brother to buzz off, but that she’ll see him soon.

The first time they all play together in person, their fates are sealed.

They start alternating weekends: Poe will come up and bring his bass with him, or Finn will drive himself and Rey down, and they’ll spend two days playing music, drinking beer, and rewriting songs Poe crafted in his youth. Rey’s song makes it into one of their practices, and while she bristles at the rewrites, it comes away sounding like the battle cry she always wanted it to be. She throws her heart into it when she sings and hears Poe’s fingers stumble on his bass, hears Finn miss a beat on his drums.

Her smile when practice is done is sharp and biting, but full of wild love.

Poe is set to graduate in the early days of May, with Finn and Rey following just behind. On the one rare weekend they’re not all together, Rey calls Finn over to her house and sits him down in Poe’s old bedroom. She has the inklings of a song in mind, but she’s spent so long in their company that it doesn’t seem right to write it without them. All the same, she wants it to be a surprise.

Finn grins at her and pulls out a pen along with his drumsticks.

When Shara Dameron hears them practicing later that night, she has to lean against the hallway wall and pull herself together. Her house is shaking with sweet noise and laughter, and the song her daughter has written for her brother is enough to move her to tears.

They can’t perform it exactly how they’d like to when Poe comes home from college, but Rey’s found a new synthesizer for her keyboard, and it’s close enough. Poe won’t admit to the tears rolling down his cheeks, but he wraps his sister in a hug tight enough to leave her gasping for air. The hug he gives Finn isn’t quite so tight, but Rey sees Finn start to melt when it lingers too long. She rolls her eyes at the both of them before ushering them into the kitchen for graduation cake.

Poe performs an acoustic version of the song when she graduates, and she ends up in tears, too.

_4) .victorious_

_No one band member takes credit for writing ‘Victorious’. Poe Dameron refers to it as a “kick in the ass” song and references a series of hardships that came before its penning. “We needed something to get us back on track,” he says. “And this was a reminder of why we loved to do what we were doing.”_

The first gig they land as a bona fide band is in a dive bar just off of Poe’s old campus, two years later. The bar’s owner, one Unkar Plutt, looks at Rey (twenty one, dressed in white, red lipped and sweet) like he wants to eat her alive until Poe (long hair, sweet curls, dimpled smiles) and Finn (brow sweating, heart beating, growing into himself) bodily puts themselves between them. The guitarist they’ve brought on – going only by BB, and one of Poe’s old college friends – crosses their arms and does their best to look intimidating. At just over five foot, the look doesn’t do much, but the combination of the four of them and pseudo-threat they present seems to do the trick.

“Fifteen minutes,” Unkar grunts, at last. “And then you’re out.”

The band mates exchange looks, and then nod. They carry their instruments backstage themselves and listen as a meager crowd rumbles from just beyond the stage. 

“How do you think it’s gonna go?” Rey murmurs.

BB makes a noise that sounds positive, glancing up from the strings they’re tuning to offer Rey a smile.

Finn gives her shoulder a friendly clap, and it hurts, like he’s trying to disguise the way that he’s shaking. “We’ll be fine” he says, then looks to Poe. “What’s the worst that could happen, anyway?”

Their lead singer is too busy fiddling with the microphone stand to offer reassurances of his own.

Rey almost groans, but she catches the noise in her throat. She huffs as she lifts her keyboard up onto its stand and brushes over the keys. It’s as familiar to her as her band mates are, and having it here is a comfort. When she looks up again, it’s to see Poe frowning at the bar’s ratty curtain.

“Nervous?” she calls, with all the gall a little sister should have.

Poe looks back at her and flashes her a smile that hasn’t dimmed with time. She sees the strain around the edges, of course, but even his false hope is enough to bolster her spirits.

“At least if we die, we all die together,” BB chirps before coming to Poe’s side.

Rey sticks out her tongue at the too-short guitarist, then settles down behind her keys. Her band mates are grinning, bouncing with nervous energy. Rey takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, bracing herself before the shitstorm can begin.  

The curtain drops open.

The dance floor is half empty and no one in the crowd seems to have a face. Rey feels her hands start to sweat, but her brother’s hands stands strong behind the microphone.

“We are _Millennium Falcon_!” he shouts. “And it looks like your Friday sucks _balls_.”

The crowd chuckles. The cheers they get as Finn taps out the beat are lackluster, but they’re there, and it’s enough. Rey keeps her fingers light on the keyboard as her brother starts to sing.

The words pouring out of his mouth have a different tone than they did some seven years ago, but they still shake Rey to the core. She catches her foot stamping to the beat and some small part of her – thirteen years old and brimming with energy – considers it her greatest victory.

By the time the song is finished, the dance floor has filled. The look Poe throws back at her is ecstatic. He glows as they leap into the next song, Finn’s beats thrumming through them like the steady heart beat keeping them all alive.

Thirteen minutes pass in less than a blink of an eye. When Poe announces their last song, the crowd is screaming, and Rey thinks her heart is going to explode.

“This is ‘Victorious’!”

They’d written it several months ago, and almost by accident. Rey had been between jobs, Finn had moved back home, and Poe and BB were renting an apartment that flooded whenever it rained. They’d met one night and discussed dissolving the band for an indefinite period of time, just so they could all get their lives back on track.

Instead, they’d written another song.

Rey swings her hips as the crowd in front of her dances. The laugh she lets out mid-song is completely involuntary, but it falls in with the beat and punctuates what can only be called an unmitigated success. The ragged curtain falls on an uproarious crowd and leaves the band struggling to catch their breath.

_Millennium Falcon_ leaves the bar that night unsteady on their feet, but with laughter pouring out of their mouths. There’s a hundred and fifty dollar check resting in Poe’s jacket pocket; a refund of their deposit, as well as some of the night’s tips. Unkar Plutt has invited them back the following night, and has offered them a standing position in his line up – so long as they keep bringing in money.

None of them had seen the figure watching them from the corner of the bar, but then again, none of them had bothered to look. The high they’re riding on is contagious, magnetic, intoxicating, and for one long moment, there is nothing better in the wide, wonderful world than this. 

_5) .loverofthelight_

_‘Lover of the Light’ is a song that_ Millennium Falcon _claims belongs solely to Poe Dameron. Written just before their big break, Dameron won’t say what inspired the message behind the song, but fans have their own guesses as to what – or rather, who – the lead singer had in mind._

Rey wakes up the next morning to an empty apartment. Her roommate hasn’t returned from her own misadventures, so the only sounds she can hear come from the road just outside her window. She lays back on her pillows and stares up at the ceiling, counting ceramic dots until she’s motivated enough to get out of bed.

Checking her email isn’t her first priority in the morning, but she does it, anyway – a hangover from the two years she’d spent in technical school. Rey pours herself a bowl of cheap cereal with one hand and scrowls through her inbox with the other, deleting the junk mail that’s collected overnight. She’s just about to sit down on the couch when a peculiar name catches her eye.

‘Skywalker Industries’ doesn’t _sound_ like junk mail, but she doesn’t know for sure. Rey opens the email and reads through the message. Then she reads it again. Then again.

The moment it makes sense, she reaches for her phone and calls her brother.

“Rey.” The gravel in his voice tells her that she’s woken him up, and Rey is irrationally pleased. “What do you want?”

“Skywalker Industries just sent me an email,” she tells him, breathless and a little bit dizzy. “They’re a little indie place, and their front man saw us play last night. His name is Luke, and he wants to have drinks with us before we perform tonight.”

“Skywalker?” Poe says. “I haven’t heard of them before. Have you looked them up?”

“Give me a second.” Rey presses the phone between her shoulder and cheek while she types. The website for Skywalker Industries is clean, but it rings of ‘old internet’. Rey tells her brother as much and listens to him huff.

“Email them back and tell them we’re interested,” he says, at last. Rey hears him fight through a yawn and smiles at her knees. “When do we go on tonight, again?”

“Unkar is letting us start at nine, and we have a thirty minute set time.”

“Fantastic,” Poe mutters. “I’ll be over after breakfast so we can make a song list. I’ll bring Finn with me, too.”

This brings Rey up short. “Are you sure? He lives closer to me.”

There’s a muffled noise in the background, and then something like a laugh. “I’m sure,” Poe says, and Rey recognizes the amusement in his voice. “Don’t worry about it, alright? I’ll see you soon.”

Rey hangs up the phone a moment later and – sits.

There’s no real evidence that they’re sleeping together, she thinks, as she pulls her cereal bowl closer to her lap. The pang in her chest doesn’t care.

Who is she to judge is her brother and her best friend are sleeping together, anyway, though? So long as they’re happy, she should be fine. Rey shakes herself and downs the rest of her cereal, determined not to think about anything else until her bowl is empty.

(Poe is the one who’s better with people, she reasons, when she reaches for her phone again. Even if Finn was her first friend, it makes sense that he’d succumb to her brother’s charms eventually.)

(Somehow, it still hurts.)

She sends a text to BB with the good news, then returns her attention to her email.

<< To: Skywalker Industries  
From: Rey Dameron

Dear Mr. Skywalker,

We’d be happy to meet with you before our set tonight…. >>

Poe and Finn arrive shortly before noon, both of them looking ragged but pleased with themselves. Rey gives them a cool once over as she ushers them into her living room.

No one says anything, but it’s clear that the dynamic has changed. Rey’s heart clenches in her chest, but she smiles, anyway. The look that passes between her brother and Finn is like light passing through a window; it is pure, and Rey feels a lump of guilt settle in next to her jealousy.

“So,” she says, reasserting herself into the space. “What are we looking at for tonight?”

“We could do some of the stuff we did yesterday again, I think,” Poe says, shaking himself back to reality. “But there’s also a piece I’ve got written up – we played it a while ago.” He responds to Rey’s raised eyebrow with a hapless shrug. “Sorry, sis.”

“No, you’re not,” Rey mutters. She snatches the sheet music from her brother’s hand and reads over the lyrics. They’re familiar on her tongue, but they taste different now. She glances back at her brother and lifts her eyebrow higher. He’s too busy looking at Finn to see her disdain.

“You know,” she says, her voice tinged with amusement. “I’m really surprised I didn’t figure this out sooner.”

Her room fills with laughter, and for a moment, Rey’s heart lightens.

The song is the last on their set list for the night. BB is less than happy about having to pull out a banjo from their collection of instruments, but after a series of increasingly buttery compliments from both of the Dameron siblings, they cave. The song is practiced, and the banjo is packed away with the rest of the instruments as _Millennium Falcon_ returns to the bar for their second performance.

The band sits down in a booth with Luke Skywalker after the stage is set up, their fingers twitching and Poe’s tune stuck in their heads. The conversation is loose and only semi-professional. Luke talks with his hands and ends up splattering most of his beer onto the polished wood table, but nobody minds. There’s laughter all around until, to their surprise, a contract is offered.

“I want _Millennium Falcon_ to be the first band I produce an album for,” Luke says, his keen eyes tracing over their shocked faces. “You have a certain style that I find appealing, and I think it would be nice to share some of that with a community.”

_Millennium Falcon_ exchanges a series of nervous glances. Rey has to force herself to stop biting her lip and directs her gaze at Poe. The front man shifts uncomfortably beneath all of their gazes, but squares his shoulders and returns his attention to Luke.

“Can we have a few days?” he asks. “To think about it, I mean? BB and I are up for it, of course, but the other two –”

“Can make decisions for ourselves,” Rey huffs. She’s almost surprised at Poe’s addressing of their youth, but she’s twenty one and feisty and not about to let her older brother run her life. “We don’t want to be doing anything permanent without thinking about it, first, of course,” she says to Luke. “But we’d be interested, as well.”

Poe and Finn are exchanging a look over her head, and BB is fighting back a snort, but Rey’s gotten good at ignoring them.

“I understand,” Luke says, a smile tugging at his lips. “And yes, you’re welcome to take your time before deciding. I’d like to hear from you before the end of the month, though.”

“Of course.” Poe’s neck looks ready to snap, he’s shaking it so hard. “Thank you again, sir. This is – this is more than we could have dreamed of.”

Luke’s grin looks like it could envy the sun. He offers to buy them all another round before they go on stage, but _Millennium Falcon_ declines. They set up their instruments and walk out to greet a crowd that cheers their name: hangers-on from the night before and their friends from campus, out to enjoy the cool rush of a Saturday evening.

Rey sees Poe and Finn exchange another glance before they all start to play. She, in turn, looks to BB, trying to find some solace in their company. The guitarist only shrugs.

Every song they play is a repeat, save for the last one on their list. It doesn’t quite sting, the way her brother caress that song, but it leaves something uneasy resting in Rey’s stomach. She’s frowning by the time their show comes to an end, but she’s quick to mask it when her band mates look her way.

In the end, they accept the offer with Skywalker Industries. Luke invites them out to the outskirts of the city in southern California where he’s based, and they accept this, too. They pack up their things without so much as a second thought, all four of them piling into Poe’s car just as the sun rises on a brand new morning. The hood of the car glints with dawn sunlight as Poe revs the engine.

Rey watches from the backseat until their apartments – their lives, their parents’ house, everything – disappears into the dust. There’s a song, she thinks, to be written in that, but the notes won’t find their place in her head. She’s too distracted by the burn of the light as they drive out of Jakku, letting it blind her until she has to close her eyes and look away.

California isn’t too far away, but it tingles beneath her skin like a storm, or a threat, or a promise. Of what, though, Rey still doesn’t know.


	2. Side B: First Order of Business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Thanks to the couple of you who commented; I'm glad you like the story so far! This chapter belongs to Kylo Ren and First Order of Business, and I'm fond of both the story and the photo edits. I hope you like it, and please! Comment! I love hearing from you; seeing the AO3 emails in my inbox makes my day a little bit brighter.

_The band, **First Order of Business** , traces their roots back to the band formally known as **Empire**. Anakin Skywalker, stage name Darth Vader, was the grandfather of **First Order of Business** ’s guitarist, Kylo Ren, while **Empire** ’s lead singer, William Hux, is the grandson of singer Sid Palpatine. The only unattached figure within the band is Rebecca Phasma, and she cites her involvement as due to Hux’s insistence instead of her own personal interest. The band seems at odds with its own popularity and strikes a standoffish figure in the supposedly friendly musical world. _

 

**1) .worldonfire**

_The origins of **First Order of Business** guitarist Kylo Ren are unclear. Many different stories about his joining up with the band have been circulated, though the man himself has verified none. Many online forums have claimed that ‘Kylo Ren’ is not his real name, and that he bears a striking resemblance to one-hit wonder Han Solo of _Kessel Run _. This connection, when presented to the guitarist, has been met with either silence or brutal shut downs. At this time it seems unlikely that the lives of these two performers are connected._

When he first arrives at university, Benjamin Solo divides his time equally between his shit-hole of a dorm room and the bar closest to campus – Niima with two ‘I’s, like the pretentious fucking dive it is. He orders his first drink while the other freshmen are still buzzing off the high of their orientation and revels in the incredulous look the bartender gives him.

“Who the hell do you think you are, kid?” he asks, before demanding to see Ben’s ID. Ben hands it over and waits patiently for the man to hand it back. It’s a fake, yeah, but it’s a good one. He got it from a friend of a friend along with a name – William Hux. It’s a connection he may capitalize on later, but right now his priorities are a little more earthly.

“What kind of name is Kylo Ren?” the bartender huffs as he passes the ID back.

“My name,” Ben – Kylo says. “Now, are you going to give me my drink or not?”

The bartender glares at him, but reaches up and grabs a glass.

Kylo smiles.

He spends most of the night with his hand wrapped around his glass, watching the people who come in and out. There’s a stage for performers, but the only person who comes on is a haphazard DJ who makes the wall pulse. When Kylo insults the music, the bartender rolls his eyes.

A woman to Kylo’s left seems to hear him, and she, at least, chuckles. It may speak to the quality of the music that it can’t drown out his voice, or it may speak to his level of intoxication. Kylo’s not really sure.

“If you think you can do better,” the woman says as she takes the seat next to him “Then, please do. Otherwise, don’t complain.”

Kylo turns to her, loose-lipped and muzzy-headed. “I _can_ do better,” he snarls.

The woman considers him, then lifts one pale eyebrow. “You play?”

“Yes,” Kylo says. “Guitar. Electric. My playing _alone_ sounds better than this bullshit.”

“Oh, I really doubt that,” the woman smiles. “But I have a friend who’s looking to start a band. If you think you’re such hot shit, you should audition.”

Kylo doesn’t preen at the implied compliment (the insult is biting enough to keep him otherwise occupied), but it softens his sneer. “When are auditions?”

The woman reaches into her back pocket and passes him a folded up flyer. Kylo’s hands are shaky as he takes it, and he needs several moments to make sense of the words.

“Who the hell is the First Order?”

“That’s us,” the woman says. “Or, at least, it will be. Soon.”

She lingers for a few moments more, but it becomes clear that Kylo is otherwise occupied. She leaves him with a look of amused distaste, then disappears into the slowly-growing crowd.

Kylo stares at the flyer for a few minutes longer, the taste of his most recent beer lingering in his mouth. He nearly throws the thing away, just out of spite, but the flyer makes its way into his back pocket instead.

He gets kicked out of the bar that night, hauled out by the bartender and some of his friends. As he’s stumbling back onto campus, one thought pierces its way into his brain: he’s going to audition. He’s going to knock the fucking socks off of whoever the fuck these First Order losers are, and he’s going to do it by playing his own damn song. Anything he even tries to write has to better than the _bullshit_ playing at the _bullshit_ bar, anyway.

When he wakes up in the morning, it’s to three pens snapped in half over his chest and two dozen pages of crossed out lyrics. One sheet is taped to his dorm room wall and is decorated with exclamation marks and varied profanity that only grows sloppier as he reads it.

It needs editing – sober editing – but he can manage that.

It takes him a couple of days, but soon enough the song looks less like word vomit and more like music. Kylo calls the number on the flyer and speaks with the woman from the bar, then arranges his audition date. When he hangs up, he throws himself back down on the dorm bed.

He titles the song ‘Scorched Earth’. When they hear it, the woman – Phasma – and her ginger companion – the infamous Hux – make him a deal: they’ll let him in the band, but only if he renames the song.

‘World on Fire’ isn’t _his_ , but after the newly christened _First Order of Business_ plies him with beer, Kylo finds that he really doesn’t care.

**2) .thunderstruck**

**_First Order of Business_ ** _’s debut of the song ‘Thunderstruck’ can be found in many variations across Youtube. While there is no official footage from the first performance of the song, it’s clear from the sheer mass of phone video that the debut was well attended and highly thought of. The attention that **First Order of Business** found in its local community seems staggering, but speaks to the appeal of their rough and tumble lyrics._

Kylo and Hux spend the next several weeks skipping classes to spend time in Hux’s basement. The only things sustaining them during these long hours are Hux’s seemingly endless supply of energy drinks and his less-than-appealing protein bars. It’s a mind-altering and exhilarating experience, and the rare moments Kylo leaves (to attend his classes, usually after a fight with Hux) feel long and dull. Music pours out of his veins and onto the page, and it’s addicting, listening to it all play out. It feels like someone’s unlocked the gate in his head and all of his ideas want out at once. They’re scrambling over one another to make it into the real world, and Kylo is more than happy to oblige them.

Some two months into the academic year, he and Hux emerge from Hux’s basement with a folder full of sheet music. Kylo has circles that look like bruises forming under his eyes, and Hux’s lips are cracked and bleeding. Phasma, when she sees them, blinks long and slow. Then, with her monotone, measure voice, she says:

“You’re both fucking insane.”

The smiles they give her do nothing to disprove this statement.

She makes them eat – Phasma may not have maternal instincts, but the mere sight of these two skeletons makes her want to be sick – and then she shows them the progress _she’s_ made. Phasma has spoken to every bar owner in town twice, vetting their stages, their wages, and their willingness to have a newborn band up on their stage. The beginning of the semester, she tells them, is prime time for fresh blood. All they have to do now is move their asses, and they’ll have access to all the best spots before anyone else has even thought to move.

So they move. In between classes and the practices Hux schedules with military precision, they tour the town. Kylo borrows one of Hux’s dress shirts and nearly busts the buttons, but this seems to work in his favor. He doesn’t do a lot of the talking, but he’s able to stand behind Phasma and Hux like a well-trained dog, baring his teeth in something that can’t quite be called a smile.

After a week of patrolling, they have their names on the call lists of four different places in town. Hux makes a schedule for these, too, and shares them with his bandmates online. It’s all a bit heady and maddening, but it brings Kylo to life like nothing has before, so he relishes in it.

He’s still not one hundred percent sure what courses he’s taking this semester, and there are a dozen messages on his phone from his mother, but they’re not important right now. What’s important is that his fingers are growing calloused, and that his voice is growing rough, and that the drunken crowds that frequent the bars in town scream whenever _First Order of Business_ comes on stage. It’s better than any high he could have imagined, and he’d be loathed to give it up.

The night after they debut ‘Thunderstuck’, Kylo wakes with a sore throat and a formal email in his inbox. It takes him a while to parse through the words, but the revelation that he’s being kicked out of school hits him with…less weight than he thought it would. Kylo slumps back into his bed and gets a few more minutes of sleep before calling Hux to let him know.

A few hours later, he’s moving his things out of the student dorms and into Hux’s basement. The ginger man shakes his head at the sight of his bandmate, disheveled and groggy-eyed, and barks out a laugh that is somehow charming.

“You’re a delightful little fuck up, Ren,” he says, his tongue curling around Kylo’s false name like he owns it. “I suppose we should consider making the band a full time gig now, shouldn’t we?”

 That night, another call comes in from his mother. Kylo, laid back on the couch with a pen between his teeth, glances at his phone, but he doesn’t answer.

** **

**3) .jungle**

_‘Jungle’ was written shortly after **First Order of Business** fell in with Elijah Snoke, of Starkiller Bass, but it wasn’t recorded for another two years. Some fans blame the repressive nature of Starkiller’s contracts for the delay, but others suggest that it was writer Kylo Ren’s rampant perfectionism that kept the song out of the public for so long._

Hux sends out emails to a dozen record companies the day Kylo gets kicked out of school. Phasma sends some of her own, as well, and reveals herself to be better connected than either of the men believed. Her emails bring in responses. Hux’s do not.

There’s a bit of a tiff after that, but Kylo’s too busy repacking his things to pay much attention to it. One of Phasma’s responses has come from a man named Snoke, and he wants them to come by his office – in southern California. _First Order of Business_ is more than happy to oblige. They pile into Hux’s shithole of a car, stack their instruments up in the back, and start to drive.

It’s a long series of days that gets them to California. Off the top of his head, Kylo can count six occasions he nearly got left behind, and several more for Hux. Phasma was never on the receiving end of such threats, but Kylo distinctly remembers pulling her out of a holding cell in Santa Fey and cursing at her like he had some sort of death wish. He’s crawled back into the car that night with a black eye and a sore jaw, but they had laughed about it in the morning.

The best moment he can remember, though, is calm. He has his guitar sitting in his lap, and he’s playing mellow chords as they drive through a long stretch of desert. Phasma is singing – she doesn’t, usually, but her nonsense words make more sense than Hux’s angry rants. Hux, driving, is beating out a rhythm on the steering while, bobbing his head as they go. It’s a memory that’s painted red and yellow, and Kylo holds onto it as California comes closer and closer.

There are twenty four unanswered messages on his phone.

They’re a mess by the time they arrive at Snoke’s offices, but the man himself doesn’t seem to mind. Wheelchair-bound and balding, he smiles, folds his hands on the table in front of him, and gives it to them straight. He’s interested in hiring them, and for a reasonable fee, so long as they’re willing to play the music he gives them.

Kylo bristles at the idea. He wants to argue - he has several good songs bouncing around the back of his skull - but then Hux is agreeing and he deflates, lost. The pay is good, he reasons, better than good. Kylo shares a look with Phasma over the ginger man’s head. She hesitates, then shrugs. Snoke pulls out a contract and slides it across his desk.

Hux is the first to sign it. Phasma is the second. Kylo goes last. He makes sure his signature is a biggest and ignores the look Hux throws him, but Snoke smiles at him with some sort of approval. The man promises to send them all their pre-payments and directs them towards an apartment complex that’s set up nearby.

_First Order of Business_ walks from Snoke’s office crowing like they’re the kings of the world. They spend what remains of their travel money on booze and a hotel room that seems unusually tolerant – but maybe that’s just the town. Kylo wakes in the morning to another message on his phone and a mouth that tastes like cotton, but a feeling of pride in his chest that nothing can diminish.

He writes another song in the hours of that morning, before Phasma or Hux can be roused. It’s not something, he thinks, that will ever see the light of day, but it’s _his_ ; his in a way that none of their songs since the first have been. He carries it in his pocket for the next several days, touching it like a talisman to keep his fears away.  

_First Order of Business_ spends those days hunting down an apartment, unpacking their things, and then moving in to Snoke’s recording booths. After their first day in the office, Snoke informs him that he wants to drop their first album within the next three months. The market, he tells them, moves quickly, and they must be ready to jump on the train if they want to get ahead. The schedule he outlines seems to appeal to Hux, but Kylo looks at it once and feels himself growing tired.

He reads over his song one last time that night, then tucks it away into the creases of his suitcase.

There are twenty seven unanswered messages waiting on his phone.

** **

**4) .theyawninggrave**

_Never performed by **First Order of Business** , ‘The Yawning Grave’ was released as a solo track by Kylo Ren some years after the band’s arrival in California. There are rumors of a live performance recorded and placed on Youtube, but none of the fan forums have yet been able to locate the video._

There is a moment – just a moment – when Kylo thinks this has been a bad idea.

He stays up late watching the neon and moonlight dance through the windows of the apartment he, Hux, and Phasma share. His notebook is open in his lap and full of chicken scratch. It’s a comfort to write on nights like this, when sleep is evasive and the world spins too fast. Even if Snoke is providing them with all of their songs now, Kylo can’t quite bring himself to stop working. He has a dozen tunes tucked away, hidden along with the first, waiting for the day they’ll be sung. There will likely be dozens more.

This latest one – well.

He’d listened, earlier that day, to the voicemails his mother had left him. There’d been a distinct tone change when she found out he’d left college – a lot of yelling, a lot of swearing, and a lot of telling him not to come home. Those had stung. He wishes, almost, that he’d listened the messages earlier, just so he could revel in her anger and feel pride in what he’d done. Now his mother’s words just rattle in his head like discontent bees.

The music he’s set them to isn’t something _First Order of Business_ would ever play.

Kylo looks over his chicken scratch one more time, then reaches for his guitar. His chords are soft out of necessity instead of tonal intent, but it works for the mood the song. He hums the lyrics more than he sings them, adjusting the notes as he goes.

The first lights of morning are playing with the neon when he finally puts the song away.

The piece refuses to leave him alone, and all the work in the studio won’t drive it from his mind. The purple bags return under his eyes to the point where Hux starts to comment on them, first with disdain, and then with concern. Phasma doesn’t say a word. She looks at him like she did the day they signed their contract, and then looks away.

One night, after a particularly long day in the office, Kylo takes his song and his guitar and slips out of the apartment. He wanders the street for a few hours until he comes across a bar that’s still open, it’s neon sign blinking with the words: “Open Mic Night!” He wanders inside and finds a crowd of twenty or so people gathered around a makeshift stage, cheering as an older woman with dreadlocks plays a harmonica to the tune of ‘Dust on the Bottle’.

He pays the cover fee and gets in line, listening with half an ear as the other performers take their turns. It’s going on one in the morning when he finally takes the stage, but the crowd is drunkenly cheerful and anonymous enough that he can’t be upset. Kylo situates himself on the too-small stool and has to tuck his feet underneath it to sit comfortably. All at once, his hands feel too big and the world feels too strange, and he wants to run from the stage and hide in the comfort of his apartment.

“Don’t worry, man!” a voice from the back shouts. “We don’t judge!”

The cheer is taken up by the bulk of the audience and shouted until Kylo’s ears are burning. He’s fighting back laughter – or maybe the nausea, he can’t really tell. It’s not until the bartender calls for quiet that he’s able to take a breath and muster the courage to sing.

The first chords of the song summon true silence into the bar. Kylo stares at the worn floorboards of the makeshift stage until old habits get the best of him. When he looks up, he focuses on a spot in the back of the crowd and doesn’t make eye contact. At least, not intentionally. He sees the woman with dreadlocks clutch at her heart like he’s cut into her soul as the second chorus begins. It’s a brilliant, bright white moment like he hasn’t experienced before, and he goes into the third chorus with a little more bite in his voice.

When he’s finished, the bar erupts with applause and wild, unhindered cheers.

Kylo sneaks out the back before anyone can come talk to him. His guitar case feels heavy, and he’s struck by the unshakeable feeling that, somehow, Snoke will know what he’s done, and the entire band will suffer. All the same, he can’t quite bring himself to regret it.

He shivers all the way back to the apartment.

The next two years play out in the same way – he plays for Snoke during the day and sneaks out at night. _First Order of Business_ has meager success when they release their first album; success that only grows with the release of their second. Kylo gets a place of his own so he doesn’t have to sneak out at night and leaves Hux and Phasma to their business – they fall in with one another and he’s not one to stand in their way.

It goes on like this – this duality of existence – until one morning, Kylo wakes and feels like the earth has spent the whole night shaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs do not belong to me, and respectively belong to Les Friction, AC/DC. X Ambassadors, and Lord Huron.
> 
> Let me know what you thought! XOXO


	3. Let the Music Save Your Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Thanks to everyone who keeps coming back and reading this! This is where we get to the meat of things: interaction, romance, and so on. This is written in a style that I don't typically use, so thanks to all of you who seem to like it! I'm glad you're willing to stick with me while I play around a bit.
> 
> Enjoy!

_ _

_.wolveswithoutteeth_

_‘Wolves Without Teeth’ is the second of eight songs on_ Millennium Falcon _’s first album, and is one of only two sung by Rey Dameron. The other, ‘I Will Never Die’, is included as a hidden track._

_Millennium Falcon_ moves into a run-down apartment twenty minutes away from Luke Skywalker’s recording studio. They’re living on top of one another, but it feels no different than it has in all the times before. Poe and Finn may be sharing a room now, but Rey hardly minds. It leaves more space for her and BB to spread out their things. So what if the sex noises get a little annoying? Rey buys herself a pair of earplugs sometime in her second week, then offers BB the same. They take them with a kind of reverential gratefulness that makes Rey laugh when she turns away.

During the day, Rey spend her time in Luke’s studio playing with the keyboard he’s lent her and with synthesizers more complex than she’s never seen. Per Luke’s contract, _Millennium Falcon_ has three months to pump out an album – doable, given the amount of songs they have stored away, but undeniably stressful. It makes her shiver to think about people – all sorts of people – listening to her, but she’s quick to reel herself in. No one’s going to hear any of their music if they don’t get anything recorded, and she hardly has time for daydreams. She picks up a second job at a mechanic’s shop and works there, too, whenever she’s not recording.

In what little free time she has after that, Rey writes. Poe writes, too, and they trade songs with one another, but there’s a reality to it, now, a need for each song to be something good. It does scary things to her creativity, but she’s gotten to the point where she can’t sleep if she doesn’t write.

‘Wolves Without Teeth’ comes somewhere in her third week living in the apartment. She writes down snippets of lyrics in between cars that come into the auto shop and as the sun sets that night, humming idly as she goes about her work. Poe throws her a knowing look and offers his bass to her whenever she’s ready, but she shoos him away. This song, she thinks, is more for her than any of the others have been, and she wants to do it her way before she lets her bandmates touch it.

It ends up sounding like a cheerful funeral dirge. Rey tastes dust in her mouth from the world outside her windows and feels the heat playing off her shoulders.

She plays the song for the band, and then they play it for Luke. It’s not the first song that ends up on their to-be album, but it’s there. Her vocals, so rarely used, are a haunting addition to the lineup they’ve got. Luke takes her aside after it’s all said and done and asks her if she’d like to sing more often.

Rey considers, then shakes her head, no. The vocal belong to Poe. She’ll sing when she can, but she likes her place behind the piano.

Music hums through her veins, though, and trickles out her fingers, leaving her restless as the nights grow longer. She slips from the apartment one night with it pounding in her head (or maybe that’s just Poe’s mattress next door) and walks, tapping out beats on the side of her thigh with the hand that isn’t holding her mace.

She stumbles on the open mic night by accident. She doesn’t intend to wander inside; she’s passing by on the other side of the street, in fact, too busy humming to really be paying attention. It’s the singing, however, that catches her attention. Rey looks up, nearly snaps her neck in the process, and is crossing the street before she even realizes what she’s doing. She lingers in the doorway of a little shop that looks half bar, half smoking lounge, her ears twitching for another snatch of song.

There’s a round of applause, followed by a mellow “thank you”. Rey hesitates, then steps inside, careful to tuck her mace away in her pocket.

The crowd – though it can’t quite be called a crowd, she supposes – is spread throughout the room, on couches and stools that look mismatched at best. They’re all staring up at a small wooden stage where a man in black sits, a guitar stretched out across his lap. His legs are too long for the stool, and he looks comic, hunched over as he is, but he’s strumming the strings like a lover and he looks – at peace.

“I’ll only subject you to one more before I go,” he says, much to the crowd’s amusement. Rey finds herself a spot on the open wall and watches him as he starts to sing again. The noise in her head goes silent as he strums, his chords dancing with hers until there’s nothing but peace.

She doesn’t recognize what he sings, but she feels like she knows it in her soul.

He’s done too soon and disappearing from the stage. A woman with dreads and wrinkles around her eyes comes up and takes his place, waving him away while reminding everyone that open mic night is open to everyone, not just nasty regulars who come in all the time. Rey hears the man laugh and has to fight back a smile of her own.

She stays through another two performances, then slips out into the night. The man in black is nowhere to be found, not even in the crowd, but she wonders at his song. The beat she taps out on her thigh belongs to him, but it mingles with her wolves and leaves her wondering.

She sends an email to Luke that night and requests to rewrite her song. He grants this to her on the condition that she does it quickly, and that _she_ ’ _s_ the one who has to tell the band.

The end result is a brief argument with Poe and a song that comes as naturally as breathing. Rey takes her place at the front of the recording booth and lets the music croon out of her, mixing her voice with her brother’s, and feels, for a moment, content. The dust of the desert doesn’t itch at her skin; instead, it’s a comfort. Luke gives them the thumbs up from outside the booth and leaves them to pack up their things for the night.

Rey doesn’t tell her bandmates about the bar downtown. She sneaks out when the next open mic night comes around and sets herself up at her spot on the wall, closes her eyes, and listens.

** **

**.onewayoranother**

_Despite his step away from the spotlight after their first two albums, fans of **First Order of Business** ’s Kylo Ren leapt at the chance to hear his solo performance of the band’s song, ‘One Way or Another’. The song was a hidden track on the band’s third album, but was rereleased as a single a few months later. _

Kylo doesn’t notice her at first.

It’s been two years – two long years of working for Snoke and doing this, playing at this same bar to keep himself sane. It hurts him at the same time it comforts him, like an itch he can’t quite scratch. He’s alone more often than not, even in the crowd, but he can’t let it go for the life of him. Even with two albums out and a third on the way, he’s lost and unsure of where he’s supposed to go.

There are no more messages waiting for him on his phone. He’d gotten a new one, halfway through his first year away, and never bothered to give his mother his number. He tries not to think about her now.

The stool he sits on is still too small for him, but Kylo’s gotten better at fitting himself into small spaces. He sends a half sure smile out at Maz – the woman with the dreadlocks who’s taken him under her wing. She waves at him from the back of the house, then motions for him to start singing.

The old nervousness isn’t there anymore. If Snoke knows he’s doing this – and by now, Kylo’s sure he’s not – then it doesn’t matter. Kylo takes a deep breath and starts to sing.

He’s written himself a dozen or so songs over the past two years; songs that have never seen the light of day, or the inside of a recording booth. They’re _his_. He doesn’t have to write for _First Order of Business_ anymore, so it’s one of the ways he manages to busy himself, and now that he has his own place, he doesn’t have to hide it. He sings, soft and low, and casts his eyes out over the crowd. _First Order of Business_ still performs in bars and occasionally on state fairgrounds, but this – this bar, this crowd – is something he’s long grown comfortable with.

The girl changes that, a bit, when she comes stumbling in, but not enough for him to consider her important. Kylo glances at her throughout his set, his eyes covered by his long swath of hair. She stays through the whole thing, and seems to linger, but after he swings his guitar onto his back, he doesn’t pay her much mind.

It’s only when he sees her again – on time for the first performances, but back in her same spot against the wall – that he starts to pay attention.

She’s young, that’s much is for sure, and her hair’s tied back behind her head in buns can have to be all kinds of uncomfortable. She’s small, too, smaller than him, and her skin has yet to take on the California sheen (not that he’s one to talk; he’s as pale as the day he first arrived). He dismisses her, this time, as a tourist, and performs his set without once looking her way.

When she comes back for a third time, he decides that he wants to talk to her. He makes his way over to her thirty minutes before his set and scores the chair next to her spot on the wall. His long legs stretch out, barely brushing her calves, but it’s enough to make her look at him before she shifts away.

“You seem familiar,” Kylo says, wincing as the line sloppily leaves his mouth. “Have I seen you here before?”

The woman snorts. “How many other times have you used that one, hotshot?”

“To be honest, this is the first time,” Kylo admits. “But really. You don’t seem local, but I don’t know many tourists who keep coming back to this spot.”

“Maybe I’m just a persistent local.”

She’s cute up close, he’ll give her that, but he did not expect the sass. Kylo leans back in his fluffy chair and eyes her, his look of disdain tempered only by his amusement.

(He doesn’t know it, but it’s a look that he’s inherited from his father.)

The woman raises her eyebrow at him, then turns away. It’s a bit of a disappointment, actually, and he wasn’t quite expecting it. Kylo frowns and pushes himself forward, tapping her knee to get her attention again.

“Can it wait?” the woman asks, and hell, her voice is full of sunlight and bells. “I’m trying to listen.”

It takes Kylo a moment to remember that, yes, someone is on stage right now. He mutters a quick apology and turns his attention back where it belongs – that is to say, he pretends to be looking at the stage, but is really looking at _her_. She’s a fascinating piece of work, wrapped in an off-white camisole and a pair of dark jeans. He tries to get her name the next time there’s a break, but she proves herself squirrely, and asks for his, instead. Kylo gives her the same name he gave Maz, some two years ago.

“I’m Ben,” he says, then offers her his hand. “Ben Solo.”

It feels more like a code name than it ever has before, more than ‘Kylo Ren’ ever did, but Kylo Ren belongs to _First Order of Business_ , and more importantly, to Snoke. Ben Solo belongs to no one.

“It’s good to meet you, Ben,” the woman says, offering him a genuine smile. It takes Kylo a moment to realize she’s laughing, and he frowns, trying to parse out why that is.

“Ben!” A familiar voice shouts from the stage. Kylo drops the woman’s hand at once and is on his feet, reaching for his guitar case while Maz stares on from the stage.

“Coming!”

He can hear the woman snickering as he makes his way through the crowd, and it makes his face flush and his jaw ache with embarrassment. He levels Maz with a glare, but the older woman only shrugs. “If you want to flirt, you can do it later,” she tells him as she shoves him towards his seat. “But this is what you get when you show up here all the time. We have expectations now.”

“Tyrant,” Kylo mutters.

He doesn’t plan what he’s going to play anymore; the songs roll of off his tongue at their own pace. After his ten minutes are up, he wanders back into the crowd, only to find that the woman has disappeared.

“Do you know who that was?” he asks Maz, later in the night. The older woman shakes her head.

There’s a song dancing beneath Kylo’s skin as he walks home that night. He stays up late, until the first signs of dawn can be seen on the horizon, and writes. When he collapses into bed, it’s with the lyrics still bumping against one another but the idea and the chords fully formed and on paper.

He sees her again a week later and nearly sings it for her, but it comes off as too much and far too quick. He settles instead for cornering her again and pressing her for her name.

“I’m Rey,” she tells him at last, her brow creased with benign amusement.

“Rey,” he repeats, letting it roll off his tongue. “Well, Rey. It’s good to make your acquaintance.”

She laughs at him, but he can’t bring himself to judge her for it. She’s gone again by the time he’s finished his set for the night, but he doesn’t mind. The notion that he’ll see her again is reassuring, even if it mean a long wait in between.

He’d argue that two long years have taught him patience, but really, they’ve only taught him to be sneaky. It’s rare anymore that Kylo Ren doesn’t get what he wants.

_ _

_.doiwannaknow_

_‘Do I Wanna Know?’ was penned by Rey Dameron during_ Millennium Falcon’s _f_ _irst months away from Jakku. Uncertain of the exact date, Dameron states that is was a working that “developed over time” and underwent many rewrites before she presented it to her bandmates. Some of the original lyrics can be seen scrawled on the wall of Maz’s Cantina, a bar several blocks south of_ Millennium Falcon _’s first apartment._

A month passes in what feels like no time at all. _Millennium Falcon_ has four songs left to produce for the album, and then they leave all the work to Luke. Luke and Poe are working together to schedule them gigs in the meantime, trying to get the word out about their existence before anything gets finalized. Rey’s days become busier as time drags on, and she finds herself feeling cheerful for the first time in ages.

Her boss at the auto shop comments on this when she comes out from underneath a car grinning. Rey brushes him off and goes back to work, but her mouth is twitching and she can’t resist the urge to smile for long.

_Millennium Falcon_ plays at a local bar that next weekend, spending both days surrounded by smoke and drink. The crowd is just as welcoming as it was at Jakku, if not more so, and the payoff is even better. Rey spends her free time on Monday lying down on the apartment’s abysmal couch, staring wonderingly at the ceiling as Poe and Finn crow about their check. BB has her feet in their lap and is grinning. Rey has to look at them closely to tell, but there’s a distinct lack of stress lines on their face for the first time since they’d moved.

She resolves to buy Chinese food that night in order to celebrate. Just as soon as she finds the will to move.

She goes back to the bar come next open mic night and finds Ben Solo waiting for her. She stops at the sight of him and has to resist the urge to smirk. He’s an odd man, and a little abrasive, but his voice – well. She’ll never tell him, but it was his voice that drew her in on that first night, and it’s his voice that keeps bringing her back. There are some other nice folks who sing and sit inside the bar, and she’s introduced herself to some of them, but he’s the only one she can say she really knows.

That said, she doesn’t know him at all. He flashes a smile her way as she takes up her spot on the wall, but goes back to his conversation with the dreadlocked woman. Rey’s learned that her name is Maz, and that she more or less runs the place, but that is the extent of her knowledge.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. Rey has other things to focus on. Her eyes are tired and her body is sore from a long night at a different part, bouncing behind her keyboard while a crowd danced before her. It’s magnetic and exhausting, and she’s only here to listen to Ben before she goes home to sleep.

It’s strange, how attached she’s grown to his voice. Were she more awake, Rey would be a little more worried about the matter.

She closes her eyes and leans against the wall, letting the friendly chatter lull her into a state of security. It’s not until there’s a touch on her shoulder that she bothers to pry them open.

“You look like shit,” Ben informs her, and like that doesn’t wake her right up.

“Hmm,” she hums, pretending to think. “No, no, I think I liked your first line first. Go back and try that one again.”

Ben huffs out a sound that Rey’s come to understand as a laugh. There’s a brief round of applause from around the bar as someone – Rey doesn’t know who – walks up and ascends the miniature stage. Normally this would be Ben’s cue to take his seat, but he stays near her, his too-tall form a mountain next to her. He lowers his voice when he speaks again, but it becomes clear quickly that he’s looking to have a conversation and not to listen to the music.

“So,” he says. “Do you sing, too, or do you just come to listen?”

“I sing,” Rey murmurs back. “Just not in public.” It’s a lie if she ever told one, but she _knows_ Ben hasn’t heard of _Millennium Falcon_ before. If he’d been in any of their crowds over these past couple of weeks, she knows she would have seen him.

“You’re a shower singer, then?” Ben asks.

“Something like that,” Rey says. “I write, a little, when I have the time.” Not a lie, this time; at least, not exactly. He doesn’t have to know just how _often_ she writes.

Ben hums. “I write, too,” he says, just as the woman on stage reaches an unsteady warble. “We could collaborate some time, if you wanted to.”

Rey pulls back a laugh and looks up at him with one eyebrow raised. He looks…almost serious, but she can see the corners of his mouth pulled up in amusement.

“I’ll think about it,” she says. “But I don’t know how well our styles would gel.”

“That’s fine,” Ben shrugs. “Hell, I’d almost rather hear you sing first.”

There’s some part of her – some small, infinitesimally small part – that wants to invite him to see _Millennium Falcon_ play. The thought of it, though, is almost too much. She likes what they have here, this quiet, slightly antagonistic friendship. So Rey just chuckles and shakes her head.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“I’m gonna bother you about it until you do,” Ben says. “Seriously, Rey. Maz is gonna come after you if you keep sticking to the sidelines.”

Rey snorts. The woman in question looks back at the two of them from the front of the crowd and sends them one intimidating raised eyebrow. Rey waves her apology, while Ben only smirks.

He doesn’t let up on the topic until he’s forced to go up and perform, and Rey uses his distraction to slip away. She stays until the end of his set, just like she always does, but he lingers on stage just long enough for her to leave. She walks the dark streets of the city, her mace still in hand, but with a smile on her face.

BB is the only one still awake when she makes her way back into the apartment, but they’re engrossed in their computer and don’t bother to ask where she’s been. They have a quiet understanding, Rey and BB do, and it allows them to bond during the moments Finn and Poe are too wrapped up in each other. BB was there for her when her brother wasn’t, and when her best friend couldn’t be, and for that, Rey will always be grateful.

She stays up for a little while longer after she makes her way into her bedroom. Some of Ben’s darker tones have made their way into her head, and she decides to play with them. The resulting line of music is something she thinks she could pursue with a little more time, but the hour’s grown late, and Rey is tired. She falls asleep with the hints of lyrics in her head and the thought of dark eyes glinting at her in the dim light of a familiar bar.

** **

**.uprising**

_Not released until after their break with Snoke, ‘Uprising’ stands as a return to **First Order of Business** ’s original “rage against the system” style. Often interpreted as a call out against their ex-recording company, ‘Uprising’ was the first song produced by the band’s independent record label, “StormCaptain”, headed by member Rebecca Phasma. The song was also the first stand-alone single that **First Order of Business** ever produced. _

Hux comes to call a few days after they wrap on their third album. Kylo opens the door and blinks at the man, his toothbrush still hanging from his mouth. Hux only raises one polished eyebrow before pushing his way into the apartment.

“Good to see you, too,” Kylo grumbles. “What’s the matter? Does Snoke want us to come back in or something?”

“Not quite,” Hux grinds out. He brushes off one of the cushions of Kylo’s couch before he sits down, like he’s too good for Kylo’s plebian furniture. Kylo rolls his eyes and makes his way back to the bathroom, spitting out his toothpaste before returning to deal with Hux.

“There’s been a bit of trouble,” Hux says, when he returns. “Snoke has caught wind of a new band in town that’s trying to drum up some attention.”

“So what?” Kylo says. “We’re a little more established than any no name band. What do we have to worry about?”

“Phasma said that same thing,” Hux grumbles, leaning forward so his elbows touch his knees. “What the _both_ of you are failing to understand is that this band is moving in on our territory. We need to start scheduling shows again so they understand just who they’re dealing with.”

“Fine.” Kylo shrugs. He throws himself down on the couch next to Hux and starts fishing for his remote. “When you set something up, let me know, and I’ll meet you there. I still don’t think there’s anything to worry about, though.”

“That’s because you’re a fool,” Hux snarls. Despite his obvious discontent, he doesn’t move from Kylo’s couch. Kylo waits, then turns his full attention back to the TV. It’s almost like how they used to be, hunkering out in Hux’s basement, except there’s less paper between them and the air is a touch more awkward.

After ten or so minutes, Hux sighs. “Do you miss writing, Ren?”

Kylo glances at him and tries to keep his face casual. “Some days, yeah. The writers Snoke brings in aren’t so bad, though.”

“They could be worse,” Hux agrees. “I – will admit to looking over some of our older songs the other day. I was considering performing one the next time we go out.”

Kylo frowns and gifts Hux with his full attention. “Say again?”

“I’d rather not repeat myself.”

“No, I’m serious,” Kylo shifts his weight forward so his elbows are resting on his knees. “You’re saying you want to sing something that _we_ wrote? That breaks our contract, Hux.”

“And here I’d thought you’d be more open to the idea,” Hux sneers. “I believe we owe Snoke quite a bit for the success we’ve found, but I found myself feeling – nostalgic. If you are so opposed to the idea, I suppose you could sit out of the performance, but I’m inclined to look back at where we started for some proper inspiration.”

Kylo shakes his head, awash with the irony. He waits a few moments before responding and throws a cursory glance towards the television screen. “I think it’s a stupid idea,” he says, like he’s not been doing the same thing. “But if you do it, I’ll do it.”

The expression that crosses Hux’s face can’t quite be called a smile, but on any other man, it would be. “Excellent,” he all but purrs. “I have a piece in the works that I think would be useful for a sort of debut. I will send Phasma out to start asking about gigs at once.”

It’s like he’s back at university, his veins full of caffeine and his head full of songs. Kylo nods and does his best to contain his smile. “Let me know when and where,” he says.

Hux leans back against the couch cushions again, content like a cat and twice as clever. Kylo waits for him to get up and leave, but he looks like he’s settling in. Kylo sighs through his nose and leans back into the couch, not quite paying attention to what’s on screen but letting the noise wash over him.

He takes out all of his original songs that night and spreads them across his bedroom floor. There are still some he won’t share, but he picks up five or six and sets them aside.

When Hux calls him two days later with a time, date, and a demand for a practice, Kylo packs up these songs and goes.

_ _

_.smoothcriminal_

_Never released on an album, Rey Dameron’s cover of ‘Smooth Criminal’ can be found in the depths of Youtube. The footage, from an open mic night at Maz’s Cantina, looks to be from a cellphone, and the user who posted it – reydartech77 – has no other videos on their profile._

When she looks back on it, Rey’s surprised at how long it took her to break. She sees her Shara Dameron’s patience written into the chords of her music and the words of her songs, but it never seems like enough. When she comes home from the auto shop and finds Poe and Finn making out on the couch (again), it clearly isn’t.

The fight is simple, crisp, and clean. Rey slams her bedroom door when all is said and done and pulls her laptop close. She finds three single bedroom apartments that night and moves them into her bookmarks. She shows them to BB a little while later, but the guitarist doesn’t want to get involved.

Rey goes to her first apartment viewing alone. Loneliness curls up in her chest and stays there, her only consistent friend, but she smiles and nods as the landlord walks her through the different rooms. She knows, objectively, that living alone is the only thing that will provide her a semblance of a peace of mind.

“You take everyone!” she’d shouted, willing her voice to make it through her brother’s thick skull. “Can’t I just have one person for myself?”

Poe had been shocked, had been startled, but had rallied, just as she knew he would. There’s an ocean of guilt lying in Rey’s stomach, but she smashes it whenever it tries to rise. He has a boyfriend to comfort him, a boyfriend who was once her friend. There is clearly no need for a little sister to live in the apartment anymore.

She lingers for two more days before moving her meager collection of things out. BB helps her. Finn offers to, but is turned down. Her brother doesn’t leave his room to see her go.

She wonders, for one wild moment, if they’ve all regressed. It seems that way, as this thirteen-year-old-esque tantrum that bleeds into their work. Luke comments on it just before he sends them home for the day, several days after Rey’s moved out. Poe refuses to meet his gaze, so it is Rey who must step up and tell Luke the truth.

They fight again, after that, but it’s less personal. Rey goes home to an empty apartment and sits on her living room floor, one of Finn’s mugs pressed to her chest and one of BB’s jackets draped over her shoulders.

The nights grow colder. Rey wears BB’s jacket out to Maz’s Cantina and smiles at Ben Solo, who grins at her from the stage and plies her with bad lines and the occasional drink. He seems more cheerful, now; the anger lines she’d seen in his brow have faded, if only a little. She wonders if she’s developed some of her own.

“You still won’t sing?” he asks her, one night, on the rare occasion she’s stayed past his set. She’s been doing this more often, since she got her own place, and he’s seemed – delighted, for lack of a better term, but his delight is a strange and jumpy thing.

Rey bites her lip, that night, and considers. His guitar is slung across his back, and she could play it, if she wanted to – BB’s been giving her lessons, and while she’s not great, she’s passably good. Ben follows her gaze and swings the guitar forward, his eyes full of hope.

Rey hates to shut it down, but she does. “Not tonight,” she says. “But maybe. Soon.”

It’s a step in the right direction. Ben walks her part of the way home, that night, before turning off and wishing her well. Rey watches as he fades into the darkness, his leather jacket blending his silhouette with the shadows.

The first time she sings in public, not under the name of a band, she sings a cover. Michael Jackson’s _Smooth Criminal_ pours out of her soul while she cradles Ben’s guitar, and it makes the crowd in the Cantina holler her name. The flare of delight in her chest is powerful, and Rey is almost reluctant to leave the stage. She does, though, and presses the guitar back into its owner’s hands. Ben stares at her, wide-eyed and brilliant, with a broad grin on his lips.

“I knew you could do it,” he mutters, slipping the guitar back into his case. If Rey didn’t know any better, she’d say he sounded proud.

She apologizes to Poe a few days later over lunch in Luke’s recording studio. Poe breaks his chocolate chip cookie in half and shares it with her like they’re seventeen and thirteen, not in their twenties. He apologizes, too, though that comes later, and with more hurt on his face than Rey would like.

It’s progress, though, and she will take what she can get.

** **

**.stressedout**

_‘Stressed Out’, sung by lead William Hux, is said to have originally been released on Youtube as part of a poorly shot, poorly edited music video. The video and song disappeared a short time after they appeared online and were replaced with a link to the song on **First Order of Business** ’s Bandcamp. Rebecca Phasma remains the only band member who will acknowledge that the video existed. When questioned, however, it is said that she only laughs._

After they secede from Snoke (or, rather, after Snoke threatens to ruin their careers and Hux marches out of the office, head held high and mouth curled in a sneer), things start to pick up. Their music sounds like _them_ again, and Kylo finds himself smiling more often than he has in the past two years. When Phasma takes the spare room that used to be Kylo’s and turns it into a recording room, they’re able to really get themselves back on their feet.

Bandcamp loses their shit when _First Order of Business_ releases their single. The bandom (as Phasma has discovered it’s called) goes wild when it realizes that _First Order_ has gone rouge.

Kylo toasts Hux and Phasma when the first thousand copies of their first single sell, and then again when they hit five thousand. They don’t know how many versions are being downloaded illegally, but in the moment, they don’t quite care.

Kylo and Hux take a day and spread out across the floor of Hux and Phasma’s apartment, sharing sheet music and song lyrics between them. Hux is distinctly unsurprised by the amount of songs Kylo has written over time, but he slaps the man on the shoulder when he first sees the folder.

“You were going to get mad at me for having us break our contract while you were out doing this?” he sneers, but it’s a good natured sneer – a look that belongs solely to Hux. Kylo rolls his eyes and reaches behind his back for a can of Red Bull while Phasma rolls her eyes and goes back to playing with her recording equipment.

It’s going on midnight when Hux makes him start singing. Kylo goes through song after song with his guitar in his lap and feels like he’s in Maz’s Cantina, except there’s no Rey in the corner to smile at him whenever he looks up. He plays until his voice is raw and his hands are shaking. When he finally sets the guitar aside, it’s to see Hux staring at him with his hands folded beneath his chin. The ginger goes to open his mouth, but Phasma beats him to the punch.

“Your voice isn’t whiny enough for the sixth one you sang,” she says. “So we’re going to have to have Hux sing that. We’ll have to put you down as writer on the next album, too.”

“What about me?” Hux demands.

“The fifth can belong to you, dear,” Phasma says, condescending and endearing all at once. Kylo snorts and hopes that the darkness hides the way his ears have flushed red.

They go out and perform a legion of new songs a few weeks later. There are bars they’re banned from now – some of Snoke’s work – but there are old hidey holes that welcome them with open arms.

It’s only when he sees a flyer for _Millennium Falcon_ that he remembers the band Hux once mentioned. “What have you heard about them?” he asks, one night, sitting behind a stage with a beer in his hand.

“Doesn’t really matter,” Hux shrugs. “They’re working with a small time producer and haven’t put out their first album yet. We could have them open for us, if you’re so interested.”

Kylo snorts. “Whatever happened to your sense of competition?”

Hux, to his surprise, looks thoughtful. “I’d be interested in using them,” he admits. “It’s the sort of thing that would make Snoke’s wrinkled skin crawl, and while the image is terrible, I find the sentiment appealing.”

Hux’s ambition, it seems, has been redirected, though Kylo can’t bring himself to argue against it. He shrugs and takes another swig of his beer.

They take the flyer with them when they leave and agree to meet at the bar later that week to hear the band perform. Kylo says his goodbyes to Hux and Phasma, then walks down the southern California streets alone.

When he sees Rey in Maz’s Cantina that night, he greets her with a broad smile.

It’s the first night she sings, and he’d like to think she sings for him. Her voice is pure and has an edge to it that he can appreciate, and her tired eyes seem to light when she has his guitar in her hands. She seems almost reluctant to give it back to him, but he has a set of his own to perform, and he’s not bold enough to do it acapella.

“I knew you could do it,” he tells her, and relishes in the way her cheeks turn red.

_First Order of Business_ ’s second single hits Bandcamp later that week and sells five thousand copies that first night. Kylo’s sure to flick off Snoke’s office when he walks past the next day, on his way to _First Order of Business_ ’s first viewing of the mysterious _Millennium Falcon._

_ _

_.yellowflickerbeat_

_Poe Dameron gifted ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ to his sister with the intent not only to stretch her musical style, but to bring a new perspective to the band – and to Rey._ Millennium Falcon _’s album insert informs readers that Poe “wanted [Rey] to know that he saw her as her own person”, and that the message behind ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ felt “long overdue”._

They’re setting up their instruments on stage when Rey feels a chill, deep in her stomach. She narrows her eyes at the crowd and searches through it. No one catches her eye, but the chill remains. She exchanges a quick glance with Finn, and then another one with BB.

“Don’t be nervous,” Finn tells her, his voice so much more confident now that they’re really in the game. “This isn’t anything we haven’t done before.”

“I know it’s not,” Rey murmurs. They’ve been tentative, the two of them, since she moved out of their apartment. Finn’s mouth doesn’t know how to not smile, though, so most of the awkwardness has been regaled to Rey and her brother. She looks to him, now, and sees her same expression reflected on his face.

“You, either,” Finn says, as he turns away. Poe laughs, then swings his bass over his chest. He cradles it gently, and Rey feels a stab of softness bleed through her heart.

Then the MC is announcing them, and Finn is tapping off beats on his well-worn snare.

BB and Poe have picked up a routine, over the past couple of shows. BB walks circles around Poe while Poe sings, winding their guitar chord around the microphone stand. If they’re playing ‘Victorious’, Poe leaps from the supposed ‘trap’ he’s been placed in; if they’re playing ‘Wolves’, he’ll pretend to stumble, only to haul himself back up. He’s gotten good at sliding on his knees, lately, and Rey doesn’t want to think about why. She does small dances of her own behind her keyboard and sends flashing smiles into the crowd, but she doesn’t do more than that. If it’s her turn to sing (and it rarely is – she much prefers to stay in the back), she’ll keep her hands on the keys and wet lip the mic. It drives her brother crazy, but the local blogs have been swooning over it since she started, so Rey doesn’t feel inclined to stop.

Poe waves her up halfway through their set, and she brings her keyboard along with her. This move, once awkward, goes much more smoothly now that she’s familiar with the stage, and it’s easy enough for her to exchange banter with her brother instead of awkwardly shuffling about. He winks at her as he steps away from main stage.

“Hello, everyone,” Rey says, mustering her best kitten purr. The crowd shouts her name, and it makes her shiver inside. As much as she likes the crowd at Maz’s, _this_ gets to her in a way she’s not sure is pleasant, but definitely feels good. “We’d like to give you a treat before we go tonight. This is ‘Flicker Beats’.”

She’s gotten the name wrong, but no one in the crowd knows that. The song is new – Luke wanted it recorded as a hidden track, originally, but it’s more likely to debut as the first song on their next album (they’re going to have a next album, Rey thinks, and wow, none of them expected that). She lets Finn come in with his steady beats, then leans into the mic and watches as some of the men (and just as many women) lean in closer.

It’s a good song. She didn’t write this one; Poe did. He gave it to her a few days after she’d apologized to him, said it’d been stuck in his head and that it felt like it was meant for her. She didn’t know whether or not he was telling the truth, but she took it for the peace offering that it was. It’s a little different than what she would normally write, over even from what he would right, but she feels the care he put into it and tries to make the audience feel it, too.

BB’s humming intermingles with her words and makes her lips curl. Rey leans into her keys and drags out the silence between verses, enjoying the buzz that’s slowly filling the air.

When the chorus explodes, the crowd cheers. Rey keeps her voice as mellow as she can while still being loud enough to be heard and lets her hair drape into her face. She plays her keyboard one handed to brush it out of her face and finds herself staring out into the crowd, her mouth dragging over the lyrics as a familiar shadow comes into view.

She nearly misses the next word of the song. Ben Solo is staring at her from the bar, his eyes wide and his mouth open. The blonde woman next to him is looking between his lowered jaw and the stage and Rey _thinks_ she’s smirking. She doesn’t have time to analyze the situation, though, because the chorus is returning. She puts a little more bite into her voice and tries not to let her guilt show on her face. She’s lied to him a couple of times about this, and she knows he’ll try to track her down – if not here, then the next time she goes to Maz’s. Maybe she won’t go back. Maybe it’ll be better if she just goes into hiding for a while. Yeah, that seems reasonable.

The song comes to an end with another drawn out hum, and Rey gives the roaring crowd a brief little bow before dragging her keyboard back to backstage. Poe takes her place and says something flattering, but she can’t hear him over the pounding in her ears.

Her hands are shaking as they pack everything up, but only BB seems to notice. They look at her with unmasked concern, their voice low against the noise of the crowd. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Rey mouths back. She keeps her head low as she packs away her things, then slings her bags across her back. She says goodbye to Poe and Finn, pleading a headache in order to get out of a round of drinks they want to buy. Finn lets her go easy, not wanting to push her further, but Poe hesitates. He claps a hand down on her shoulder and looks her in the eye, and it takes a momentary stare off to get him to let her go. All the same, he presses a kiss to her forehead before sending her on her way.

Rey takes the back door out of the bar and adjusts her bags on her back. She slides the keyboard into Poe’s old car, then starts down the sidewalk.

She’s made it a block before she hears someone call her name. Rey grits her teeth and tightens her grip on her bags, but he’s bigger than she is, and much, much faster, and there’s no way she’s going to be able to outrun him now.

_ _

_._ **thecatalyst**

_‘The Catalyst’, according to Kylo Ren, came together in pieces. In a blog post written after the song was released on Bandcamp, he tells readers that “there’s no particular date when [the song] announced itself. I had to work for it, and it wouldn’t come together until I had all the pieces I needed.”_

He’s not expecting much when he walks into the bar that night. Kylo grabs three barstools with a good view of the stage and orders himself a drink, and then one for Phasma when she arrives. Despite being the second to arrive, Hux is the last to join them and has the gall to look put out by the buddy-buddy nature of his guitarist and his drummer-girlfriend. Kylo smirks and tells him to get over himself and is relieved to see Hux go right back to sneering.

It’s much easier with Hux, Kylo thinks, now that there’s no Snoke to deal with. He wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re all in a healthy place, but it’s better than where they were than they started, and that, at least, is progress.

Then the MC announces the _Millennium Falcon_ , and Kylo’s gaze is drawn back to the stage.

It takes him a moment to process what he’s seeing.

The lead man – about his age, maybe, with dark skin and thickly curled hair – has his hands wrapped around the microphone and a smile that looks like it could power a small country. The drummer is smiling, too, and twirls his drumsticks in his hand when his name is called. The guitarist – Kylo doesn’t know what to say about the guitarist other than their sense of style seems to be on point, and that they’re probably a little too short for a guitar that size, but whatever. His attention is on the woman tucked safely behind the keyboard.

Rey. His Rey. The Rey that wouldn’t sing for him for months, and then stole his guitar and his soul. That Rey. She’s standing behind the keyboard and playing for _Millennium Falcon_ , as cool and confident as though she does this every night. She probably does, now that he thinks about it, his hands balling into fists. He wants to be angry with her, he wants to be _so angry_ , but then the music starts and her hands are flying across the keyboard, and well.

He may fall a little bit more in love. He’s furious, yes, but watching her sway and smile and laugh sends him spiraling to a point where he’s not sure whether the pain in his chest is a good thing or a bad thing.

“Close your mouth, Kylo,” Phasma says, her voice slamming into his head. “You’re supposed to be a professional.”

Kylo does as he’s told and spends the next three songs trying to get his body back under his control. He’s settled firmly into anger by the time _Millennium Falcon_ announces their last song, and he’s determined to hold onto it.

The universe, of course, has other ideas, because now Rey’s dragging her keyboard forward and _bantering_ , fucking bantering, and the lead singer is stepping back like he’s going to let her own the world. Kylo wants to spit curses like fire, but then she’s talking, and if he wasn’t hard before, he sure as hell is now.  He hears Phasma chuckle, but doesn’t pay her any mind.

Rey starts singing.

Kylo’s a lost man.

The moment she sees him is painfully clear: her face remains neutral, but her entire body stiffens. The lucid, still slightly angry part of his brain appreciates that, but the rest of him aches. She’s lied to him, yes, and she recognizes that he’s not happy, but he’s becoming distinctly uncomfortable with how distressed she looks at seeing him. He wants to fade back into the shadows if it will only drive that look of discomfort from her face.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t learned how to do that yet. Kylo is forced to contend not only with the weight of Rey’s stare, but with the power of her voice, for the next several minutes. She grows ragged, towards the end, and it well near kills him to watch her. When the music finally stops, he’s breathing like he’s run a marathon. He hears a chuckle beside him and assumes it Phasma, but doesn’t have the mind about him to really care.

_Millennium Falcon_ makes their way off stage under _First Order of Business_ ’s gaze, all of them unaware save for one. Kylo turns back around on his barstool and slams down the rest of his drink before coming to his feet.

“And where do you think you’re going?” It’s Hux who speaks up, and of course _he_ ’ _s_ probably noticed Kylo’s dumbstruckedness just as much as Phasma has.

“I’m going to go talk to the band.”

“No, you’re not,” Hux says. “Phasma and I are going to talk to the band. You’re going to hunt down the girl.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kylo demands.

Phasma and Hux share a look over his shoulder – not easy to do, given that Hux is a few inches shorter than him, but apparently manageable. Kylo turns ever so slightly so he can better glare at them both.

“Go,” Phasma says, and she sounds for all the world like they’re in college again. “We’ll let you know how negotiations go.”

“Damn right, you will,” Kylo mutters. Hux laughs at him, a nasty, grating thing, but it’s kind in its own way, and Kylo almost appreciates it. He grabs what remains of the man’s beer and downs that, too. Then he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, straightens himself up, and goes storming out of the bar.

There’s a brief row of laughter behind him, but it belongs to his friends. Kylo’s ears still turn red, and he still summons a scowl, but something tucked behind his rib cages manages to lighten.

The dying light of day slams into his eyes as he walks out the door, and he stumbles for a moment, blinded. When he manages to shake it off, he looks down the street, glancing both ways before a familiar head of hair catches his eye.

“Rey!”

She stiffens again, he can see it at a distance, but she doesn’t turn around.

“Rey!”

His legs are longer than hers, but he runs, anyway, runs until he’s standing right beside her. She hesitates before looking up at him, something like anger tucked into the corners of her eyes and the tight balls of her fists.

“Rey,” Kylo says again, and he’s hardly out of breath but his voice is shaking.

This small, fireball of a woman looks up at him and sets her mouth something firm. “Are you going to yell at me?” she asks. “Are you going to call me a liar and never speak to me again?”

“Normally, I’d say yes,” Kylo says, and he means it as a joke, but something dies in Rey’s eyes. “No, no, not what I meant, let me keep going. What I’m saying is, yes, I’m sort of mad at you. Yes, you’re a fucking liar – I mean, yeah, maybe you do sing in the shower, but it’s also pretty damn clear that you sing in public, too.”

“I don’t sing in the shower,” Rey grumbles.

“Of course you don’t,” Kylo nods. “But look, this is a good thing. My band and I, we’ve been meaning to connect with _Millennium Falcon_ for a while, so this is actually kind of a good thing, in some weird, cosmic way.” He’s talking too much, and a beer and a half shouldn’t do him in like this, so Kylo blames it on the way Rey’s eyelashes brush her cheeks and the way she quirks her brow in confusion.

“What do you mean, you’ve been meaning to connect with us? What do you mean, band?”

“Yeah, about that,” Kylo’s laugh is ten types of awkward. “I’m in a band, too. _First Order of Business_. We’ve got a couple of albums out; you may have heard of them…?”

Rey blinks at him, then visibly fights back a smile. “I haven’t,” she says, and it looks like she’s ready to giggle. “Should I apologize, or –?”

“Maybe some other time,” Kylo says. “Anyway, we wanted you guys to headline for us. We just got out of a contract with this asswipe of a boss, and we’re looking to – you know – _bond_ with other local bands.” He’s lying, they’re not looking anywhere else, but Rey doesn’t need to know that. “Who are you partnered with, anyway?”

“Skywalker Industries.” It rolls off her tongue like it means nothing, but it stops Kylo in his tracks.

“Who?”

“Skywalker Industries,” Rey say again. “We haven’t released any albums yet – though I’m sure you know that – and Luke is producing our first one.”

Uncle Luke. Luke, the man who first taught Kylo how to play guitar. Luke, the man who’s probably still in contact with Kylo’s mother (he never disconnected that other phone; he just stopped looking at it. It’s lying dead in the back of his closet, and he wonders: if he charged it, how many missed messages would he find?)

“Luke Skywalker,” he says, and the name is desert dust on his tongue. “I think I’ve heard of him before.”

“He’s a good man,” Rey says, serious in a way that makes his heart twinge. “But you said you wanted us to headline for you – you want us to work together?”

“Not exactly.” Kylo’s still reeling, so the words come slow. “Hux has the details of it. He and my other bandmate should be talking to your band – now, actually.”

The look on Rey’s face is almost comic, a mash up of concern and great amusement. “Are they anything like you?”

“Yeah, a bit.” Kylo shrugs. “Sometimes worse.”

Rey’s laughter is loud enough to fill the street. It brings a smile to Kylo’s face, even though he doesn’t know why. He shoves his hands in his pockets and grins at the ground until she’s done and is wiping tears away from her eyes. “Come on,” she says, nodding back towards the bar. “Poe’s a pretty friendly person, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to handle this alone.”

“Poe,” Kylo says, as he falls into step beside her. “Your front man?”

“My brother,” Rey smiles.

Their hands brush together as they walk, laughter still dancing on Rey’s rosy lips. Kylo does his best not to stare, but his heart is pounding in his chest and definitely not from his run.

_Millennium Falcon_ and _First Order of Business_ buy each other drinks that night while debating over their styles in music, production, and the beginnings of a contract none of them can quite yet define. When Kylo wakes in the morning, it’s with Rey’s number programmed into his phone and with two unread messages from Hux. The first blithely informs him that last night was a terrible idea and that he regrets absolutely everything. The second is signed by Phasma and tells Kylo that it’s only the hangover talking, and that she’ll see him on Monday.

Kylo goes back to sleep with something bright and warm glistening in his chest, though he’s not sure if he’s ready to give it a name.

**_ _ **

**_.thegoodthebadandthedirty_ **

_‘The Good, The Bad, and the Dirty’ was written as a collaboration between_ Millennium Falcon _and **First Order of Business** as a dual effort of band writers Rey Dameron and Kylo Ren. Staged as a pseudo-Battle of the Bands, the subsequent music video pits the bands against one another with their members squaring off against their subsequent counterparts. Finn Trooper faces Rebecca Phasma, ‘BB’ and Poe Dameron face William Hux, and Rey Dameron faces Kylo Ren in a number of musical ‘duels’ that result in a final, mindboggling conglomeration of song._

Over the course of the next several months, the following events occur:

The day _Millennium Falcon_ ’s album drops, the band can be found huddled around BB’s computer screen, waiting desperately for the ‘buy’ counter to go up. They’re only ripped away by a phone call from Hux – a distraction, timed by BB and Kylo, so that BB can pass the computer out the apartment window. No one thinks to go look up the stats on a computer of their own because they’re too busy shouting after Kylo, while Hux cackles on the other end of the phone line.

_Millennium Falcon_ headlines for _First Order of Business_ the next time _First Order_ performs. They’re not partners, not really, but if Poe has more names to namedrop, well, _Millennium Falcon_ plays some nicer bars, and then a club or two. After their album drops, their live gigs take off. It’s supposedly out of courtesy that they bring _First Order of Business_ along with them, but Hux and Poe can be found sitting at bars together, their drinks in hand as they talk shop and watch practiced musicians storm the great stages.

Kylo charges the phone in the back of his closet after Rey finds it (she’s stolen a few of his t-shirts, now), but doesn’t look at it until he’s back home after a particularly grueling night of performances. There are one hundred and fifty seven messages, not including the ones he’s already listened to. Kylo cradles the phone in his hands, sighs, and weighs his options.

He meets with Luke after one of _Millennium Falcon_ ’s gigs and, as quietly as he can, asks after his mother. Rey comes off stage to find him crying into his uncle’s shoulder, his body shaking like he’s a little boy again.

She doesn’t go with him when Luke goes to take him home, but she sends him with a pack of letters: one to open every day he’s away. They’re still not dating, but there’s a quivering in her chest as she watches him drive away that suggests maybe they should be.

She goes out for drinks with Phasma and asks her about it. Phasma, tall and still beautiful, proceeds to choke on her drink. She was under the impression that Rey and Kylo were already dating – _most_ of them are under that impression, and are they really not? Rey turns as red as her raspberry margarita and tries, desperately, to change the topic.

The temptation to text Kylo about that discussion is great on both ends, but neither women give in. Kylo comes back three days later an emotional wreck and doesn’t understand why Rey abruptly stops talking to him.

There is a fight. Angry songs are written on both ends, because neither Kylo nor Rey have properly learned how to communicate. It takes an intervention on both ends to get them to start talking again (‘intervention’ meaning that Poe and Hux threw up their hands and fell in together in order to lock their obnoxious loved ones into Kylo’s bedroom, then stormed out of the apartment, promising only to come back after three hours had passed.)

(Hux had thrown a box of condoms into the room, when Poe wasn’t looking. He, unlike his familial companion, had some ideas about how Ren liked to settle an argument.)

It appeared, later, the two had made up by the time Hux and Poe returned. Hux, in a rare moment of solidarity, asked no questions. Poe, scandalized and near sobbing, had unlocked the door and fled.

Rey laughs about his face for a long time afterwards, once she gets over her own mortification. Kylo, who had his face buried in a pillow at the time was, at the time, snoring, flushes, but makes no attempt to hide his grin.

_Millennium Falcon_ is in the middle of recording their second album a few weeks later when _First Order of Business_ invites them to collaborate. The jam session that takes place is a little messy, and there’s the usual fight about who will be recording what, but the collection of songs that come out of the meeting is considered critically extraordinary.

_Release dates for the_ Millennium Falcon/ ** _First Order of Business_** _collaboration album, “Let the Music Save Your Soul”, will be announced this fall._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs, in the order of appearance, belong to Of Monsters and Men, When the Ribbon Breaks, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Michael Jackson, Twenty One Pilots, Lorde, Linkin Park, and Panic! At the Disco. This fanfiction was written for entertainment and not for profit.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! XOXO
> 
> Songs, in order of appearance, belong to X Ambassadors, Delta Rae, Avicii, Panic!At The Disco, and Mumford and Sons. These are not being used for profit and do not belong to me. No copyright intended.


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